MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL

30 September.—­When we met in Dr. Seward’s study two hours after dinner, which had been at six o’clock, we unconsciously formed a sort of board or committee.  Professor Van Helsing took the head of the table, to which Dr. Seward motioned him as he came into the room.  He made me sit next to him on his right, and asked me to act as secretary.  Jonathan sat next to me.  Opposite us were Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, and Mr. Morris, Lord Godalming being next the Professor, and Dr. Seward in the centre.

The Professor said, “I may, I suppose, take it that we are all acquainted with the facts that are in these papers.”  We all expressed assent, and he went on, “Then it were, I think, good that I tell you something of the kind of enemy with which we have to deal.  I shall then make known to you something of the history of this man, which has been ascertained for me.  So we then can discuss how we shall act, and can take our measure according.

“There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist.  Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples.  I admit that at the first I was sceptic.  Were it not that through long years I have trained myself to keep an open mind, I could not have believed until such time as that fact thunder on my ear.  ’See!  See!  I prove, I prove.’  Alas!  Had I known at first what now I know, nay, had I even guess at him, one so precious life had been spared to many of us who did love her.  But that is gone, and we must so work, that other poor souls perish not, whilst we can save.  The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once.  He is only stronger, and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil.  This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within his range, direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf, he can grow and become small; and he can at times vanish and come unknown.  How then are we to begin our strike to destroy him?  How shall we find his where, and having found it, how can we destroy?  My friends, this is much, it is a terrible task that we undertake, and there may be consequence to make the brave shudder.  For if we fail in this our fight he must surely win, and then where end we?  Life is nothings, I heed him not.  But to fail here, is not mere life or death.  It is that we become as him, that we henceforward become foul